Rupert Blue
| Rupert Blue | |
|---|---|
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| Fourth Surgeon General of the United States | |
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In office 1912–1920 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
May 30, 1868 Richmond County, North Carolina, USA |
| Died | April 12, 1948 (aged 79) Charleston, South Carolina, USA |
Rupert Blue (30 May 1868 – 12 April 1948) was an American physician and soldier. He was the fourth Surgeon General of the United States from 1912 to 1920. He served as president of the American Medical Association in 1916–17.
Rupert Blue was born in Richmond County, North Carolina, and raised in Marion, South Carolina. He attended the University of Virginia (1889–1890) and earned his M.D. from the University of Maryland (1892). His first association with the Public Health Service (PHS), then known as the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), came through a nine-month internship (1 June 1892 to 2 March 1893), after which Blue applied for entrance into the MHS Regular Corps and was commissioned as an Assistant Surgeon on 3 March 1893.
Blue spent his early years at MHS at the front lines of turn-of-the-century public health, participating in the medical inspection of immigrants to the United States and battling outbreaks of epidemic disease. Then-Surgeon General Walter Wyman dispatched Blue twice to oversee rat eradication and urban sanitation programs after bubonic plague struck San Francisco, once in April 1902 during the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, and again in August 1907 during a second series which followed the 1906 earthquake and fires. Blue’s skilled diplomacy with California state and city officials and with civil and business leaders fostered successful public education campaigns, stemming plague and enabling Wyman to avoid imposing a Federal quarantine on the Bay area. His longtime friend and assistant Dr. W. Colby Rucker was a vital part of the San Francisco campaign and worked alongside Blue in New Orleans, where he later in 1914 personally took charge of the sanitary work there against the plague.
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